What If: The Hunger Games
by TrueTigress
Summary: What if, instead of Katniss volunteering for Prim, a bitter and scorned young woman, Leanne DiMera does instead? Her sister was killed in the previous hunger games, and now she is bent on dying to join her family. She want's to die with one purpose completed: To piss off the capitol, when she sees an opening in the hunger games, how can she resist? Peeta/OC
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

**The Reaping**

* * *

_"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things."_

-Lemony Snicket

* * *

Today was the reaping, I had been to it everyday for sixteen years now so I knew how it went, people got dressed up, they stood in the square and acted as if nothing was wrong.

Last year my sister, Chloe DiMera had been one of the many children to be reaped. She was only twelve years old, and me like a fool, well, I'd been out hunting and avoiding the silly reaping because I knew my chances of getting chosen were pretty high, I decided that if I did get chosen I would just go on the run, because in those days, I didn't want to die. I wanted to live, I wanted to live my life to the full and I knew that the hunger games was an instant death sentence.

I could hunt very well, I knew how to use a bow and arrow, but my main line of defence was probably my knives and swords. I was a fierce sword fighter like my father had been, he taught me everything I knew about hunting, that was how he had won the hunger games, with his knife combat.

After my sister was killed in the hunger games, my father lost interest in everything though. I lost interest in everything. We always made it a weekly activity, me, my father and Chloe out there hunting in the wild, we'd take out bows and knives and come back with all kinds of game to feast ourselves on, and we always traded the meat too.

Since my father committed suicide over Chloe's death, I didn't know how to feel. Bitter? Hallow? Angry? I felt all of them and more.

I wanted revenge on the capitol, I wanted revenge on the sick people who designed the hunger games and made my sister pay for a crime she didn't commit. I just wish I had been there when they called her name. Now I would volunteer in place of the unfortunate soul who had been reaped this year as payment for what I had done.

Besides, I wanted to die, and if somebody else could do it, all the better for me as then I wouldn't have to try and survive this awful world on my own.

I refused to get dressed up for the barbaric ritual that the Capitol made us attend, I pulled on my old combat pants, a low cut shirt and my knee high. lace up boots. To finish the outfit I decided to wear my leather jacket, or my fathers.

It had been his from a time when he himself was in the hunger games, but he had survived.

District twelve only had two victors over the years, my father who had won because of his great aerial attack skills, climbing in the trees and waiting like a cobra to strike with his knifes from above, and Haymitch, a drunk man who had won by manipulating some kind of forcefield to his will, which by looking at the man now you wouldn't think was very possible as he looked like a bumbling idiot most of the time… all of the time.

I bet that had pissed off the capitol though, when he had used their own weapon against somebody, now that is the kind of stunt i would have to pull to get back at them, just something, anything to piss them off, and then I would finally get to die and be with my family again.

I smiled inwardly, I would love to piss off the capitol. Maybe volunteering would piss them off because it wasn't customary. Then again, maybe not.

I looked in the dirty, cracked mirror. It was covered in coal dust so I took my sleeve and wiped it against the glass. My hair was a bit of a mess, it was cropped pretty short to my chin as it was more convenient that way. It was almost perfectly straight when long, but if it grew past my chin, it started to bunch into frizzy curls.

My gray eyes stared back at me, I looked ill. I was pale, my cheeks slightly sunken, but when you refused to eat that's how you would look. Most of the people in the seam looked like this though, typically they had gray eyes, black hair and olive skin. At least my skin was different. Though, I guess my eyes were too. where as most had stormy gray eyes, i had eyes that were a blueish-greenish-gray. They could change colour depending on my mood, the weather or the light. They also had flickers of silver and gold in them and a darker blue rim around the edges.

I rarely ate or hunted now, not since my sister and father had died. Call it depression if you will, but the way I see it I was trying hard to starve myself to death, but that's harder than it seems when you are already starving as it is. This is because when you're hungry, you want to eat, but when you don't want to eat and you're hungry, it drives you insane so you have to eat something.

I sighed and stood up.

I headed out of my home and into the dry and dusty streets of the seam in district twelve. I could taste carbon in the air and the particulates from the sulfur and other crap they dug up in the coal mines. I would rather die in the hunger games any day that have to work there when I was of the age to.

I could see my school in the distance, the tacky, rundown old building that I had to spend thirty hours of my week indulging in bullshit they spouted about how great the capitol was and how we would all be coal miners in the future.

I'd be dead before that happened.

I continued to walk down the dusty roads until I got to the square, a place slap bang in the middle of district twelve that seemed to be filled with life at the moment, though not happy life. People stood around waiting for the reaping to happen, highlights of previous hunger games played on as I got in line with the people my age, people in front of me were younger than me.

I sort of blanked out and began to kick a rock with my foot, playing with it until my foot began to hurt from pressing it onto the floor so much and kicking at the rock. I had scuffed my boots, which wasn't really an issue considering they were scuffed anyway, but they were the good hardy type of boots, ones you only needed to replace every few years or so.

I saw a woman with horrid bright pink hair walk up onto the stage. I mean, really? Bright pink hair?! Of course I'd seen worse, people with dyed skin, disturbing shades of orange and green, people with implants under their skin to make they appear different and unique.

To me it seemed silly and shallow to waste money on such amenities, but when you had money to throw away like in the capitol, I guess you could do those things.

I hated the capitol. They were the reason my sister was dead and I hoped that one day they would pay, whether by my hand or by somebody elses. I had nobody, so they couldn't hold anybody against me. I blanked out for the beginning of the ceremony really, there wasn't much to interest me. All I cared about was getting my place in the hunger games.

The woman, Effie Trinket as I now recognised her as, took her place on the stage. She muttered some rubbish about the hunger games and then she began to rummage around in the pot full of names.

I hoped she picked my name so I didn't seem too crazy when I volunteered, but I guess it didn't really matter, what mattered was that I could piss off the capitol and get my revenge for what they did to my sister.

"Primrose Everdeen." Effie Trinket said, the peacekeepers headed towards a young girl, of only around twelve years old, and at that, I saw the girl infront of me begin to fight her way through the crowd. I knew what she was going to do. I would have done the same for my sister.

"No!" She called to the girl, and that's when I took a deep breath, "I vol-"

"I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!" I called, and all eyes turned to me including the girl in the blue dress with her stormy gray eyes and her plaited hair.

"What?" Effie Trinket said looking a little confused, "Child, we have not asked for volunteer's yet, we need-"

"What's the point in waiting? We have a willing volunteer, let the girl come up and take her place as tribute." The mayor said looking a little pained as he looked at Primrose Everdeen, I'd seen her before. She was the daughter of the town healer. A nice, quiet girl who wouldn't have lasted five seconds on the field.

"You're right, please, miss…" Effie trailed off asking for my name.

"Leanne. Leanne DiMera." I answered with a smug smile as I made my way onto the stage.

"DiMera, as in the victor Anton DiMera? And the tribute who was chosen last year, Chloe DiMera?" Effie asked with a little shock in her voice.

"The one and only." I laughed dryly showing my displeasure at her mentioning my family's names.

"Well, it looks like we have our female tribute for district twelve! Now onto our male tribute!" Effie said in her high pitched and very irritating capitol accent.

"The male victor for district twelve it… Peeta Mellark."

A boy came forward, he was of medium height, a lot taller than my five foot, maybe five ten. He had ashy blonde hair the colour of sand that fell in slight waved across his forehead and past his ears similar to mine. His skin was pale, more tanned than mine, but still pale and he had brilliant blue eyes the colour of cobalt.

What surprised me was how stocky he was though, nobody in the seam was that stocky… unless he was well fed. Then I realised that Peeta Mellark was the bakers son.

I had seen him around, he was one of these people that seemed relatively happy, I don't think I'd ever spoken to him, he was a quiet boy who only kept to his friends where as I was the complete opposite. I had no friends. I refused to have people near me for fear that I would be hurt again.

"Will anybody volunteer for this young man?" Effie Trinket asked the crowd. Awkwardly everyone began to shuffle like they did when they were asked this question. "Nobody? Good. Well then! Happy Hunger Games and-"

"May the odds never be in your favour." I spat under my breath too low for anybody to hear, but clearly one person had heard what I said.

"You should watch yourself, if the capitol heard that they would have your head." Peeta said as he looked down at me, somehow he was now at the side of me without realising. I took a step back, not liking been in close proximity with people.

"Fuck the Capitol." I growled lowly to him before turning away from him and following Effie Trinket into the justice building, it was a rather grand place if i do say, but the problem was that it made me despise the capitol all the more knowing that they could afford places even better than this and I was living in a beat up old shack that was barely good enough for a dog to sleep in, let alone a young woman.

I watched as Peeta said goodbye to his family, not that they seemed particularly sad nor happy that their son would be competing in the hunger games. Maybe they knew he would die.

Nobody was there for me, I didn't expect anybody to be there for me. I wasn't nobody special, nobody within the community liked me, the worst thing they did was fear me because they knew of my past and what my father and sister were capable of.

The funny thing was, my father had killed eleven tributes on his own. He was seventeen when he won the hunger games.

Chloe was twelve and yet she had gotten down to the final two, that was the year we all thought that district twelve may have had another winner, she had killed only three of the tributes herself, but she was strong and tough and very agile. The thing what killed her was her agility in the trees, she was persude by the other last tribute- no surprise that he was from district 1, but how he had killed her had been violent and sickening.

"Hey, Leanne?" Peeta walked up to me and sat besides me, his family waiting over near his spot. I edged away from him, a little annoyed at him.

"Yes?" I asked, venom in my voice. If he noticed, he chose to ignore it.

"My father wanted me to give you this, he got it from the Mayor's daughter, she said you used to be friends before… well." Peeta frowned as he handed me what looked like a golden ring, I noticed that it was actually some kind of broch, it was beautiful of course, in the center of the ring was a bar and atop the bar was a bird in flight.

Not just any bird though, a mocking jay. I smiled slightly at the gift, one small act of defiance against the capitol, taunt them with their own failed mutt.

"Thank you, Peeta." I said sincerely, he seemed a little surprised but I turned my head and smiled genuinely at him, which made him smile back. For a brief second our eyes met and something passed between us.

I looked quickly away, refusing to make friends with the weak baker's son. I needed to die, and I knew I wouldn't die by some weakling's hand.

"Yeah, well." He rubbed the back of his neck and turned away, going back to his family.

"Time to go!" Effie called to us. I took the pin and clipped it onto my breast in plain sight, letting the world know how I felt about the capitol.

"Bye!" Peeta's family called to him as he walked onto the train, I followed after him, and as we set off from the station, the train zipping down the tracks at over 250 miles an hour, the pin now felt heavy on my chest and I began to feel something for the first time other than anger, bitterness and sorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

**_PLEASE REVIEW!_**

* * *

**Chapter Two**

**Train Ride**

* * *

_"I believe the world is divided in three groups: givers, takers and the few that can balance both impulses. Giving and loving is a beautiful thing. It is the currency of compassion and kindness, it is what separates good people from the rest. And without it, the world would be a bleak place. If you are a giver, it is wise to define your boundaries because takers will take what you allow them to; all givers must learn to protect that about themselves or eventually, there is nothing left to give."_

-Tiffany Madison

* * *

I'd like to say that the first thing I did when I got on the train was take a look around at the beautiful, rich walls and the smooth leather seats, but in all truth, I ran straight to the room that would be my bedroom for the next 24 hours and I sat in there sulking in my bitterness.

I tried to plan, to think about anything I could do to piss off the capitol and make my death their fault. I had to try.

What felt like minutes later was infact hours as I heard a knock on my door, it didn't sound familiar and I guessed that I might have to answer it.

"Leanne?" The voice came, it sounded familiar now as the quiet words washed over me.

"Peeta?" I called as I sat up on my bed, running a hand through my destroyed hair.

"It's me, can I come in?" He asked me. I looked at myself in the very clean and polished mirror.

"Um, yes." I answered.

Peeta walked in, he was dressed in a suit and I had to say he looked rather cute. There's that thought again! STOP IT! I commanded myself as I looked away from Peeta, my cheeks flushing slightly red.

"Dinner's ready, Effie sent me to come get you. Her exact words were, 'Tell that… child… to hurry up and get her backside into gear or the odds won't be in her favour!'" Peeta chuckled a little as he impersonated Effie's thick capitol accent. I couldn't help but smile, Peeta was infectious. "You're smiling."

"Oh." I frowned looking down at the ground, I didn't mean to smile at him, "Don't worry. It won't happen again."

"No, I didn't mean-"

"I don't smile. That's what you meant, and you're right. Smiling is not what I do." I folded my arms stubbornly and made sure that he couldn't see through what I was really feeling. For the first time in almost a year I had genuinely smiled, it wasn't smug, malicious or even forced, it was genuine.

"Maybe you should get dressed into something more appropriate? Effie said there should be an outfit in your wardrobe for you to put on." Peeta spoke very business like.

"And why the hell would i put on some outfit that the idiot capitol chose for me?" I hissed out loud, making my despise for the capitol obvious.

"You know, if you didn't want to cooperate with the gamemakers, why did you volunteer?" He asked me skeptically, his blue eyes locked with mine.

"Because my sister died last year in the games and i wasn't there to save her. Think of this as my redemption, I die the same way she died." I spat coldly, my voice trembling as i spoke of my sister.

"What? You actually think getting yourself killed in the hunger games will please yoru sister? Are you out of your mind? If anything it's disrespectful to her memory." Peeta blurted, and then I realised something. He was right. What i was doing, going to the hunger games to die was disrespectful. She had died that way and didn't want to, so me going to die the same way was just stupid.

I suddenly felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. "You bastard." I spat, my voice thick with emotion. i grabbed my door handle to slam the door in Peeta's face and go back to my bed and cry.

"Wait," He said catching the door in his hand. "I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to say that. Who am I to judge?" He looked down and then his eyes met mine again, those brilliant blue eyes.

"No, you're right. It is disrespectful, and now I'm going to die for one silly mistake." I whispered, trying not to let the tears spill over as my voice began to hold back a sob.

Quickly, Peeta surged forward and pulled me into his arms. It was such a simple gesture, a hug for comforting, and it was something everybody craved- human contact, but for somebody like me who refused to touch another human being, it was… strange.

I froze and tried to hold in my sobs, "It's okay to cry, Leanne." Peeta whispered to me, and that's when I couldn't hold the tears in any longer. He pulled me into my room and closed the door, with me still firmly pressed against his chest as I began to sob into it, wetting his silk shirt.

"I'm sorry." I whispered, "I shouldn't be doing this…"

"It's okay, Leanne. Don't worry. This can stay between us, I promise. Nobody will know how soft you are." He half smiled, and I knew that he was teasing me!

"Soft?" I blurted and then i felt the corners of my mouth turning up, "Say's the baker's boy who decorates fairy buns!"

"Hey, decorating buns is very manly." He argued mockingly making me smile more. "Now that's the kind of smile I remember."

His fingers reached out to touch my cheek, and with a small cerse I shivered, "Effie will be wondering where we are."

"You need to get ready." He said, "I'll wait out in the hall for you."

"Fine." I grumbled slightly and then I stomped to my closet as Peeta walked out of the room closing the door behind him. I looked in the closet and I wasn't disappointed, the dress was of medium length, to mid thigh, was low cut exposing a little cleavage and it was tight around my small body, showing off my curves. I smiled at my reflection, this dress made me look like a girl! I pulled on my usual boots, ignoring the high heels in the closet. Nobody would part me from my boots. I ran a brush through my hair and the process probably took all of five minutes.

i walked out into the hall to find Peeta waiting for me. "Ready?" He asked me.

"Ready." I answered with a sigh, keeping a slight distance between us as i realised that what he had said was true, I shouldn't have chosen to die in the hunger games, it was disrespectful to my sisters memory, but that didn't mean i wouldn't try and bring the hunger games down.

I knew now that what i needed to do was win, I needed to win and become the victor, then and only then would I be able to decided my own fate and maybe, just maybe bring down the capitol for what they did to my sister and father.

AndI knew that meant that I would have to kill the baker's son.

I kept my distance from Peeta as we walked down the hallway, our 'secret' staying a secret, acting as if it never happened, because weakness was something I couldn't show to people.

"Well, there's some amazing food here, I tasted some earlier, it's completely different to what I'm used to." Peeta made small talk as we walked down the hall.

"Peeta, you do know we can't be friends, right?" I asked him, i saw his confused expression.

"Why?" He asked me, and I suddenly realised I had no reason except the fact that I know I needed to kill him, and that I didn't want to lose a friend.

"I can't lose somebody else, a friend, a family member…. it's too painful." I dismissed him with my hand, halting him from saying anything else as i pushed open the doors of the dining room and all eyes turned on me and Peeta.

"You finally decided to grace us with your presence." Effie said in her sarcastic voice, I had the urge to stick my tongue out at her or stick up twos at her. Instead, I bit my tongue and didn't say a word as i pulled my chair out and sat down. Peeta sat beside me as they were the only two seats free.

"So, you two have been getting acquainted?" Effie asked us. I narrowed my eyes and glared at her, she really did get on my nerves. More so now that I was in the same room as her and I was having to act like I enjoyed her company.

"Look, Effie, I don't make friends so stop trying to speak to me like I'm a child or like I'm somebody you know because I'm not. All you're preparing us to do is to die and be part of your pathetic games!" I hissed at her, that seemed to surprise her. I stood up as if I was going to leave, and then I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder stopping me from getting up.

"Don't speak that was or you'll get yourself killed right here and now." Peeta murmured urgently into my ear, his warm breath tickling my neck. I felt a shudder run through me as his hand lay on my partly bare shoulder.

"Well it's true." I growled back quietly enough for nobody else to hear.

"Just say sorry, look, one of us needs to survive the games, and I'm damned sure we would be better if we had allies rather than enemies." Peeta growled back, his warm breath making me shudder again, why did he have to have this effect on me?

"What makes you think we are allies?" I murmured back, my voice strained as I tried to keep it quiet.

"We're from the same district, that means we keep each other safe for as long as we can." He said with a sense of finality, I snorted a little and then grumbled a vague apology to Effie which she gratefully accepted.

The food arrived, I had never seen so much food in my life, the smell was amazing. All of the different aromas filled the air and actually almost made me feel sick, the amount of food laid before us made my stomach growl with hunger that I thought was long forgotten and I was about to grab some kind of fruity bread roll when Effie said, "No! Ask the Avox to get it for you."

"What's an Avox?" I asked stupidly, looking around for some kind of machine.

Effie clapped her hands and called, "Avox, please serve this young woman some food!" And at that a woman walked over to me. I didn't know her, but there was something odd about her face. Her lips looked slightly sunken and yet fatter than they should for her perfect face, she had porcelain coloured skin, surprisingly paler than my own, pretty green eyes and startling fiery red hair that gave her a capitol look about her.

"Who is she?" I asked.

"She's an Avox." Effie answered me as a man who looked similar to the woman served Effie one of the rolls i had been wanting.

"Yes but what is- WAIT! AVOX IS LATIN FOR WITHOUT A VOICE!" I gasped as I looked at the woman. I suddenly connected this to the stories we had of capitol slaves, people who had their tongues cut out for defying the capitol. "Oh no." I whispered.

"What's wrong?" Effie asked me looking annoyed at me, I guess she hadn't quite forgiven me for my small outburst earlier.

"She's had her tongue cut out and she's been forced to serve me! I'd rather get my own food! i don't want some poor girl serving me!" I hissed at Effie.

"Please, Leanne-" Effie said.

"No!" I snarled, and then I stood up angrily and threw my chair to the side with such power that it tripped up one of the gamemakers who had just arrived for lunch.

I began to storm out of the room, when a firm hand caught me around the waist and pulled me into his chest, at the feel of his hard muscles contracting to hold me, I sighed and let myself embrace this contact.

"Peeta, this is wrong. This is so wrong." I murmured heart brokenly.

"I know." He sighed and then he began to stroke my hair.

"I don't want this, I want to go home, back to my sad little life where-"

"Where you were safe. I know, but you volunteered and now pissing of the capitol people isn't going to get you any marks, so just lay low and ignore them." Peeta sighed as he took a step away from me, he held my shoulders as he bent down to look into my eyes, "Promise me you will keep safe and not antagonise them."

"I'll try." I sighed and then he let go of my shoulders.

"Good, now we're going to go back into the dining hall, you'll ask politely is you can serve your own dinner and then after that we will go and see our mentor." Peeta instructed, I nodded half heartedly and decided to just try and be as pleasant as I could, maybe that way I would survive the hunger games, become the victor and manage to break the capitol a little bit at a time.

We walked back in, and before I opened the door, I felt Peeta take my hand in his, at first I was going to flinch away from the contact, but I decided to just let it be. I let my fingers entwine with his, and that's how we walked back in, hand in hand.

"Effie, I'm greatly sorry. Please, may I serve my own dinner? I don't like people touching my food, I'm a germaphobe." I said, trying to fakely explain my outburst.

"Well why didn't you just say that? Avox, let the girl serve her own food." Effie said with a clap to the Avox. I looked glumly at the Avox and decided that I would never want to be one of them, I'd father die a thousand deaths that be controlled by the capitol like that.

"Thank you, Effie, Thank you… uhh… Thanks." I said to the red head girl refusing to simply call her 'Avox.'

I had to admit, Peeta had been right about the food, it was amazing, and soon I had eaten a whole lot of the mouth watering food, gorging on the sweet and complex tastes of the capitol. At least they knew how to do something right, even if it was make food.

"You will both go meet your mentor after this, Avox, escort these young people to the chambers of mister Haymitch." Effie commanded the young red headed girl without so much as a please or any grateful look.

"This will be interesting." I muttered to myself, which made Peeta half smile almost nervously as we followed the Avox girl down the hall and into Haymitch's room.

The first thing I noticed was the rancid stench of alcohol and vomit. I gypped, stopped to gain my concentration and I walked into the room where Haymitch was sat at a darkly lit table, drinking his booze.

"So… my mentees are here at last!" Haymitch slurred in his drunken voice. I felt a growl rise in my throat, but I managed to help it back.

"How the fuck is he supposed to help us in this state?" I hissed at Peeta.

"Haymitch, we need help." Peeta said, dumbly.

"Here's some help kid, some great advice: Stay Alive." Haymitch chuckled at his own joke and then I growled, not hiding my anger, "Somebody let a tiger in here?" He mused as he took another drink of his alcohol.

I saw Peeta lunge forward and he hit the bottle out of Haymitch's hand, it smashed against the wall with an earsplitting tinkling sound as the glass his the floor.

Haymitch raised his hand to slap Peeta, and I surged forward, taking my boot knife out of my boot and thrusting it against Haymitch's jugular. I had him in a position that if he moved, he would get his throat slit.

He began to laugh, "So I finally got myself a couple of fighters this year then?" He asked.

"Sober up Haymitch and help us through these damned games or I swear this will be going into your throat." I spat the words at him, which made him laugh more.

"I'll make you a deal. You do whatever I say, and I'll sober up enough to mentor you through the games." He held his hand out for me to shake as I still pressed the knife against his neck.

"And what do you want me to do exactly?" I hissed.

"Pulling the knife away from my vital artery might be a good start." He chuckled again, clearly in a drunken haze.

"Do it, Leanne. He can help us." Peeta warned me, his piercing eyes looking me straight into my soul.

"Truce." I said, before walking away from Haymitch.

"Now, first advice, stop showing how much you despise everybody because unless you want to die, that's not going to earn you sponsors." Haymitch tapped his fingers on the desk. "And one question, you got any talents?" He asked us both.

"Not really. Unless you count baking cakes." Peeta stated glumly.

"Me neither." I frowned, god I was going to die in these games so quickly.

"Then you're both dead." Haymitch concluded with a clap of his hands.

"You clearly haven't seen Leanne with a bow, knife or sword. When she would hunt with her father she would always bring my father squirrels and rabbits back, apparently she never once missed a shot, straight in the back of the head piercing the animals brain and killing it instantly, and her knife throwing to bring down bigger game, she can throw one knife and it would wedge itself in the same place, now my father get's his game off another hunter since Leanne stopped hunting!" Peeta gushed, and then I realised that he had taken quite a bit too much notice in me.

"Yeah well, I've seen you lugging around fifty kilogram bags of flower. I wouldn't exactly call that nothing, and you came second in wrestling in school last year only after your big brother!" I exclaimed, realising that I had just sounded like some stalker, I was sure I never paid attention to the baker's son. Now I wasn't so sure.

"Sure, that'll mean I can win the games if there's bags of flour to throw about." Peeta folded his arms in what I now realised was his, 'I'm ready for an argument' stance.

"Well-"

"Actually Leanne may have a point. Sometimes it comes down to brute strength and hand to hand combat, those skills could save your life, now tell me more about yourselves…." Haymitch trailed off and I spent the rest of the session telling him a slightly edited version of my life story.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Hey, thanks for the review Alice :) Leanne's personality is that she is very outspoken, she says what she wants, but over the course of the story she IS learning to bite her tongue, and the only dialogue similar is supposed to be Peeta's I wanted my FF to start the same as the proper hunger games, but instead of Katniss volunteering, Leanne does because her sister was killed in the previous games and her father was the other district winner who killed himself after his daughter's death and she want's to be killed the same way her sister was. That's why she doesn't care what she says at first because she WANTS to die. It's only when Peeta made her see sense she realised what she had done was stupid._**

**_In a way, I needed her to be a hunter and very agile which is kinda Katniss like, but unlike Katniss her motivation towards the games is completely different, and some of the stuff she says about Peeta is similar, but I needed to show that she wasn't as closed off as she thought she was to the world after her ordeal, and making her show interest in somebody made sense._**

**_And the thing about the central text made me laugh a little because it annoys me when text is to the side on a computer! Haha. Anyway, thanks for the review, :)_**

**_Another thing is that though Katniss doesn't like the capitol, that's because of how they treat everybody. At first, Leanne only cares about how they treat her and how they treated her sister who was her best friend and the only person she could truly be herself with._**

* * *

**Chapter Three**

**Nightmares**

* * *

_""I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?"_

-John Lennon

* * *

I layed in bed that night, the soft mattress was so different from the cold, hard floor I was used to. I didn't know if it was too soft, too unlike what I was used to because in my mind it was almost uncomfortable. I missed the smell and the feel of the earth beneath my body. All I could feel was the soft mattress and the clicking of the train as it sped along the tracks at high speed.

I turned over and fell asleep.

_I looked around the dark empty space and all of a sudden I knew I was dreaming. I knew this because out of the dark fog my sister walked, she looked scared and on her cheek she had a slash, running from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth._

_"Run!" She shouted to me, I froze as she ran towards me, "RUN!" She screamed frantically as a boy with black hair and eyes the colour of coal chased her towards me, a knife held high above his head._

_"No!" I screamed as I ran towards her, she didn't seem to notice me though, she ran to a tree, grabbing the branch in her small grubby hands, hoisting herself up into the canopy._

_The black haired boy roared animalistically and I Knew what I was watching was a replay of her death. I couldn't be seen for some reason, I screamed and screamed at the boy to leave my sister alone, but he began to lug himself up the tree, tying a knot in a rope he drew out of his back pack._

_He made it into a lasso shape, and he threw it towards my sister. The first time he threw it, my sister managed to dart out of the way just in time. The second time she was not so lucky._

_It clipped around both of her delicate ankles, she looked at the boy with her wide blue eyes and gasped as he yanked on the rope, sending her plummeting off the branch and towards the ground._

_What happened next was unthinkable. The rope caught on a branch and she was suspended around 4ft off the ground, hanging by her feet._

_There was nothing she could do as the boy jumped from the tree and landed on the balls of his feet at the side of her. He took out his knife, and with what she said next, I began to sob, "Remember who the enemy is!" She snarled to the boy, and then he plunged his knife into her stomach and dragged it down her body, making a deep gash that ran from her belly button to the end of her chin and then he plunged his hand into the deep wound and pulled out her heart like he was gutting a fish._

_I screamed._

"Leanne?! Leanne, wake up!" Somebody called as they shook my shoulders. In the dark I had no idea who it was, so I grabbed the boot knife off the side of my draws and was about to stab whoever was in my room when the person grabbed my hand and stopped me. "Woah! It's me!"

"Peeta?" I whispered, my voice teetering on the edge of a sob.

"The one and only." He smiled and then sat on the end of my bed while I was clutching the knife in my hand. "I heard you screaming, I thought you were in danger."

"So you came to rescue me?" I said with more than a little scepticism in my voice.

"Something like that." Peeta muttered and then he frowned, "What's wrong?"

"I had a nightmare." I whispered almost too low for him to hear. What was it about this boy that made me want to spill my soul to him?

"About what?" Peeta asked, I looked away from him, trying not to make eye contact, but he reached out and pulled my face up to look into his eyes, "About what, Leanne?" He asked again with more power.

"About my sister's death." I whispered, everything in the dream had happened, all of Panem had seen her heart getting ripped out of her chest, but usually that kind of stuff wasn't allowed.

"You mean…?" He trailed off as I looked away again, trying not to relive the nightmare again. It was one I often had, it didn't surprise me that I had the nightmare, more that somebody seemed to care that I had nightmares.

"Yes." I answered with disdain in my voice.

"Are you afraid it might happen to you?" Peeta asked me as he placed his hand over mine, I felt my hand twitch in an automatic reaction to move his hand, but I forced my brain to accept his touch and feel comforted.

"Not really, things like that don't usually happen, it just haunts me that I wasn't there to volunteer for her when she needed me to." I squeezed my eyes together stopping the flow of tears, I hated crying.

"But think of what you did this year, you stopped another twelve year old getting reaped. You saved her life." Peeta said to me, and suddenly I was filled with something other than regret for volunteering.

"You're right Peeta, but for how long?" I asked, "Someday another twelve year old will be reaped, in fact, there was one who was reaped this year. I mean, how could I kill somebody that young? How could I manage to cold bloodedly do what that man did to my sister to her?" I whispered pulling my hand away.

"I know, Leanne. I know." He sighed, "Just try not to let it play on your conscience too much. If you do it will eat away at your soul." Peeta said to me, he half smiled trying to get some response out of me.

"What if it's already eaten away at my soul, Peeta?" I asked, I looked forward, not into his eyes, but not at anything in particular.

"Then you fix it." He answered.

"You can't always fix what is broken, though." I sighed and began to fumble with my knife in my hand, stroking the blade with my hand.

"But maybe you can be fixed." Peeta smiled slightly, looking into my eyes, I felt something pass between us, like some kind of lightening bolt. The eye contact lasted a few mere seconds but it seemed to last for a very long time.

"Oww!" I yelled as the blade sliced my hand, it began to bleed from the small cut and I managed to drag my eyes away from Peeta to examine the cut.

It wasn't too deep, but it was on the section of my hand that bleeds a hell of a lot, the part between my index finger and thumb.

"That's going to need a bandage." Peeta sighed as he looked at my hand. He took it in his own, his hand getting slightly smudged with my blood. "I know where the medical room is, here, follow me." He said as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me up with relative ease.

"Peeta, my hand will be fine." I rolled my eyes as I tried to sit back down.

"Leanne, let me take care of you." He said with a bite of his lip like he was almost nervous. I froze at those words. Nobody had ever wanted to take care of me apart from my little sister, and that was only because I took care of her, even my father who was the best father I could have hoped for never really 'took care' of me because he saw that as a mother's job, and my mother had died in childbirth with my sister, so I could hardly remember her.

I sighed and then took a steady step forward with Peeta's hand firmly around my waist as we walked to the medical room.

I had to admit, I liked his hand on my waist, it felt nice.

"Here we are." Peeta said as he let go of my waist with a little sigh, by now the blood was gushing down my arm and onto the edges of the frilly white nightgown the Capitol had bestowed upon me.

He opened the door to the medical room, apart from the clicking of the tracks and the buzzing of the lights, the room was perfectly still and silent, various medicines lined the cupboards and I could see just about everything you would need right here for a medical emergency.

"Right, I'll find some bandages. You just sit tight on that bed over there." Peeta pointed to the medical bed over in the corner of the room and I couldn't help but smile and shake my head at him.

I climbed onto the bed, realising it was made of leather and it was quite a thin mattress, it was somewhere in between the hard ground I usually slept on and the amazingly plump beds in the room I was sleeping in. I realised this bed was the most comfortable of the lot, and the leather smelled nice.

"Here we go, hold out your hand, I have to wiped the blood away first, then we'll put some antiseptic cream on it, a gauze and then the final bandage." Peeta said to me as he took my hand and began to wipe it with a damp sponge. As I looked at my hand in his I realised something I had only ever realised with my father. I had tiny hands, Peeta's were huge, like they could have enveloped mine completely if he closed it.

I tensed as Peeta brushed the sponge over my cut, "Shh, it'll be okay." He said as if I was a fawn who would dart away at any moment. Usually I would find that patronizing, but coming from Peeta's mouth it sounded endearing.

As he finished dabbing away the blood, he took some wet wipes that smelled like vinegar and used them to wipe over the cut to get rid of the rest of the blood. I took a sharp breath at the stinging pain and Peeta pulled the wipe off my hand and said, "Done, now we just need to use this cream and wrap it." He said showing me a bottle of salve that would make the cut heal faster than it would normally.

"When did you get so good at healing?" I smirked as he took a small dollop of the salve and began to massage it into my hand where the cut was, this made my body feel like it was melting, and I tried not to slur as I spoke, but his fingers really were magic.

"I guess it's a talent I've always had." Peeta shrugged and then pulled his fingers away to get the gauze, much to my disappointment.

"That was one of my father's talents too." I murmured out loud, not really meaning to say it.

"That's nice," Peeta grinned at me and then he picked up the bandages.

"He stopped after my mother died though, because he thought that if he couldn't save her he couldn't save anybody." I said sadly, "My mother used to call him 'Doctor Doctor.'" I laughed genuinely for the first time in what seemed like months, wondering why I was even telling Peeta these things.

"Well, I've finished." Peeta laughed with me and I felt a smirk come to my lips.

"Thanks, Doctor Doctor." I smiled at him and then inspected his handy work. The bandages were arranged very neatly and perfectly. The cut would heal in no time.

"You're welcome, Leanne, now maybe we should get you back to bed." Peeta said as he scooped me up into his arms, I felt my cheeks begin to burn as he prepared to carry me to my room.

"Peeta, it's my hand what's hurt, not my legs." I blushed and I saw Peeta smile.

"Doesn't matter, you're still hurt, and I'm not going to make one of my patients walk back to their room with a hurt hand." He smirked at his own joke, calling me a patient because I had called him a doctor.

"Oh, you're so not funny Peeta Mellark." I frowned heavily trying to hide my laughter.

"On the contrary, I think I am hilarious, Leanne DiMera." Peeta grinned at me and I began to chuckle quietly, Peeta was completely infectious.

He finally got back to my bedroom, and as he opened the door I felt a cold chill run down my spine. This room would have been one of the last places my sister had slept in the previous hunger games, right before… I sighed as he placed me onto the bed, my face turning hard again.

"What's wrong now?" Peeta asked with a slight furrow in my eyebrows.

"This was one of the last place my sister would have been before she died. She probably slept in the same bed as I am now." I shivered at the thought and I tried not to picture her corpse laying in the bed, disemboweled with all of her organs pouring out of her stomach, but I couldn't get the picture out of my mind.

"I'm going to head back to the medical room, I'll sleep in there." I felt my skin go pale as I stood up to walk out of the creepy room.

"Stay with me." Peeta said, I looked towards him quickly and then looked back at the bed.

"Are you sure?" I asked quickly. Under normal circumstances I would have said no, but the thought that this may have been one of my sister's final resting places seemed to haunt me.

"Yes, come on, it's just next door." Peeta was about to pick me back up, but I took a step back.

"I can walk to the next room Peeta." I rolled my eyes sarcastically and he shook his head as me as I walked out of the door.

The room was amazing, almost identical to mine with the same kind of furniture, and in the corner of the room was some kind of love seat. I headed over to it and sat down, and as I was about to lay down and go to sleep, Peeta said, "What are you doing?"

"Going to sleep." I frowned.

"Do you really think I'm going to let an injured woman sleep on the couch? Get in the bed. I'll take the couch." Peeta said as he walked towards the couch waiting for me to move.

"Peeta, I'm not taking your bed." I frowned, turning over on the couch to make my decision final, and then I felt his strong arms lift me up and he was carrying me to the bed!

He dropped me on the bed carefully.

"Yes you are." He said and walked over to the couch, sitting firmly on it looking at me.

"Peeta!" I growled and I stood up, stomping over to him and the couch and trying to stare him down, "I'm not taking your bed!"

"Yes you are." He said stubbornly, "That's what gentlemen do."

I felt my brow furrow, "Peeta, don't be a pain in the ass, just let me sleep on the damned couch!" I yelled.

"No. You're not sleeping on the couch." He challenged.

"Neither are you!" I growled.

"You're sleeping in the bed!" He yelled at me, and then I narrowed my eyes.

"Fine!" I hissed and I saw his look of confusion.

"What?" He said a little shocked.

"You heard me." I said as I pulled back the cover's on Peeta's bed and I laid in the bed, too angry and pissed off at Peeta for not listening to me.

"Good night, Leanne." Peeta said with a hint of a smile in his voice.

"Night." I said rolling my eyes and then I sighed, "Good night, Peeta."


End file.
